================================================== A Call to a National Assembly for Black Liberation

Black people are under attack on all fronts!The police are shooting us down in the streets, the stores, in public housing and the parks. Our economic status is going to hell as well ? few jobs, low pay, limited or no benefits, and the only system of last hired first fired. Our old people are suffering, and our children learn little or nothing in school. As women we are the poorest and least respected, and face a triple oppression based on race, class and gender. We are discriminated against and suffer state and societal violence because of our sexual orientation. As military veterans we are the most homeless, unemployed, and in need of adequate health care. Where we live are the most neglected areas with the fewest tax dollars fixing streets and sanitation, with the most crime allowed as the drug war continues against us, with the worst concentration of illnesses, bad schools, and toxic environmental conditions.

Something must be done.The current period of fight back against police violence has been an inspiration for everyone who wants change. Following the great Occupy Movement the Black resistance against police killings has been leading the country into a great awakening. We know that there is a 1% who rules over us. We know that the police serves this 1%. But we are scattered in our fight back. We have some clarity but we need more. Our grassroots struggle is all too often misguided by Obama sanctioned officials in and out of the government.

There is a way to go forward ? to rebuild the Black Liberation MovementAt critical times we have gathered our forces into one mighty movement to help focus our energy on common goals using shared methods. This is again such a time. Great gains were made by these unity efforts, including negative experiences that we must learn from as we continue to go forward. We have local, regional and national organizations. We mostly agree on the main tasks to fight back against attacks, to raise people?s consciousness about the evils of the capitalist system, and to build forms of unity of action to concentrate the power of Black militancy. Now is the time to rebuild the Black Liberation Movement.

We are starting with a Draft Manifesto for Black Liberation.The Draft Manifesto (see below) is a document to start a national conversation to get our dispersed movement focused back on a common orientation. A national debate can lead to a consensus that can be the basis for a united Black Liberation Movement.

The National Assembly will be held October 2015 ? we need your endorsement!A national planning process is being organized to reach out to all who will join this effort. Please get in touch. We need individuals and organizations to endorse this effort.

Now is the time brothers and sisters! We need all hands on deck.

Cast away all doubts about our ability to do what we have always needed.

Each organization is critical.

We need each other.

We march from Ferguson into the future!

==============

Draft
Manifesto

for
Black Liberation

Initiated by the Black Left Unity
Network

www.blackleftunity.org?www.jblun.org

? www.blackactivistzine.org

?www.blackleftunity.blogspot.com

Introduction

The
deep crisis facing Black people requires bold radical action. We can
accept this challenge as individuals and as groups, but the strategic goal must
be the rebuilding of a national movement for Black liberation. There are
many groups, small and scattered even when organized on a national level.
We are in the hundreds of thousands on an individual level of people who see
the need for militant fight back. It is time for a great coming together
to rebuild our Black liberation movement on a national level. This
manifesto is being presented to you as a draft that we can all debate and make
whatever revisions are necessary. We need to be on the same page and
channel our efforts into one mighty fist that can strike decisive blows against
our oppressors.

Our
fight has always been for freedom.

The history of Black people involves every aspect of life but there has always
been a central theme, how can we get free. This is a critical starting
point for all education and self-consciousness in the Black community. It
demonstrates the basic humanity of Black people, the will to live and find ways
to improve the quality of our lives as a collective, a community, a
nation. In order to be a revolutionary you have to know your history.

We
have a Black Radical Tradition to build on.
Our tradition of militant fight back has been anchored in five ideological
tendencies that are most often woven together in the thought and practice of
any given individual, organization, or movement. These are: Black
liberation theology, Pan-Africanism, Nationalism, Feminism, and
Socialism. The most recent concentration of ideological discourse and
debate has been in the 1960's represented in the thought, life and work of
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. In order to be a revolutionary you must
study this radical Black tradition.

We
are rebuilding the Black Liberation Movement.

There are many ways to identify when we have had a national Black liberation
movement. The main point is having a high level of unity of the militant
forces actively organizing and mobilizing at local levels. Moreover, this
goes beyond single issue movements and grasps the overall character of fighting
on all fronts. When we have had a high level of our national Black liberation
movement we have had policy formation by bodies of national representation,
coordination of national campaigns of struggle, and major conferences in which
ideological debate led to consensus and an intensification of resistance.This refers to the 1967 and 1968 Black Power
Conferences, the 1970 Congress of African People, the 1970 revolutionary
peoples convention of the Black Panther Party, the 1972 Gary National Black
Assembly, the 1974 conference of the African Liberation Support Committee, and
the 1998 Chicago launching of the Black Radical Congress. In order to be a
revolutionary you must study these advanced stages of our national Black
liberation movement.

We are the Black
Left Unity Network (BLUN)

Based
on the lessons of these major conferences and the intensification of the
capitalist crisis it has become clear that the Black liberation movement has to
be rebuilt on the basis of the fighting capacity of the masses of working and
poor people who are the vast majority of people in the Black community.This manifesto is being developed by the BLUN
in order to recruit people and organizations who understand that racism and
national oppression can only be ended by waging a Black working-class led
struggle in which the capitalist system is targeted as the main enemy of Black
people, indeed all of humanity.

The
BLUN has been in motion for the past seven years networking with individuals
and organizations, building unity and joining every struggle that emerges. Our
greatest advance in the last two years has been our journal, The Black
Activist.This journal represents the
kind of unity dialogue that we hope to spread.It begins the general theoretical work that can educate, motivate, and
agitate for greater development of the national Black liberation movement that
we need.

We
are building the BLUN as the organizational framework for all Black
revolutionary militants to come together to discuss our ideas, to coordinate
our struggles, and to mobilize the vast majority of our people in the fight
back that is necessary to oppose and defeat our enemies.To deepen the unity and context of
revolutionary struggle, we must get the necessary criticisms from our comrades based
on the principle of unity-struggle-unity.

Black
History is the fight for freedom

The lessons of history are general summations of a process, and
can be about individuals and social groups, from the local level to the entire
world.This process includes social
forces that represent different classes and nations, as well as many other
aspects of humanity (gender, sexuality, religion, generations, etc.).The main dynamic of the African American
experience, the theme that embraces all Black people, is the fight not only to
survive but to resist and end capitalist exploitation in whatever form it has
been developed, from the slave trade and colonialism in Africa and throughout
the African Diaspora, through sharecropping, industrial wage slavery, and now
being damned to excruciating forms of poverty.The system has been against us but we have always fought back, and the
fight back is the great theme of our history.

Africa

Africa was invaded by Europeans.They gave Africa a double blow ? they stole
the people and forced them into the labor systems of slavery in the West, and
they colonized African land and virtually enslaved the people who remained in
Africa.In both instances they imposed
European culture on African people, especially language, religion, legal
systems, what little education that was provided, and cultural aesthetics.The famous colonization frenzy was legalized
in the Berlin Conference of 1884-85.

After World War II African resistance movements expelled the
invaders and created independent African countries beginning with Ghana in
1957.A rising African capitalist class
who compromised the liberation struggles by aligning their policies with the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund mainly guided these countries.Many African revolutionaries who represented
the working class and struggles against capitalist neo-colonialism were
murdered (e.g. Patrice Lumumba, Chris Hani, Amilcar Cabral, Edwardo Mondlane,
Pierre Mulele, General China, Kimathi, Stephen Biko, Maurice Bishop, Walter
Rodney, etc.).Today Africa is facing
the need for a 21st century revolution led by the working class and
its impoverished masses.

The
European Slave Trade

The process of raping African of its population was to serve
the labor needs of Europe, especially in the fields and mines of the
Americas.As Eric Williams explains this
was a triangular trade that served to link Europe (manufactured goods) to
Africa (Labor) to the Americas (extraction of raw materials).This barbaric process spread Africans to
every island in the Caribbean and to every region of North, Central, and South
America creating the African Diaspora.

The freedom struggle raged against these crimes against
humanity.Strong examples are Queen
Nzinga Mbande of Angola, Joseph Cinque of the Amistad Revolt, the revolts led
by Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey,Gabriel
Prosser and the freeing of the slaves from the plantations by Harriet
Tubman.

The
Slave System

Slavery was a labor system that bread, sold and worked Africans
to death, lasting about 400 years!Millions
of Black people were spread throughout the south to produce tobacco, rice, and
many other products, especially cotton.Black field hands were worked to death in a system from ?Can?t see to
can?t see.?

It was the economic process by which the wealth of the ruling
class was created that continues through inheritance and corporate profits till
the present day.The production of
cotton pulled Black people into the deep-south creating the ?Black belt.?

Emancipation

As result of the two labor system ? slavery in the South and
wage labor in the North ? there was struggle over the control of the federal
government.This struggle led to the
Civil War.Slave labor threatened the
wages of white workers, and, added with the moral imperative to oppose this
vicious system advocated by the Abolitionist Movement, this motivated the
masses of people in the north to support the war.

Black people were not given freedom by anybody. They rose up and fought in many ways to be
their own liberators.DuBois in his
master work Black Reconstruction discusses the general strike of slaves
withholding their labor and undercutting the slave regime.Black people fought in the Union Army at
numbers (per cent of total population) far higher than whites.Further during Reconstruction Black voters
and elected officials played a dramatic role by democratizing the south including
free public education for everybody that had not existed.

The
African American Nation

Within the Black belt Black people began to create African
American culture that was a continuation of but different from their original
African cultures.They created new
social institutions, forms of speech/language and collective community life that
were demonstrated in the church, musical and other social and political venues.They were concentrated in counties that were
majority African American, dominated by the plantation economy, repressive
county and state governments and a system of apartheid.

The modern Civil Rights Movement developed in opposition to the
barbaric oppression imposed on Black people in the Black Belt, from lynching to
peonage.

Dispersal
to Proletarianization

During the 20th century there was a push out of the
south and pull into the North (West, Midwest and East) that dispersed Black
people into the major cities of industrial development.Black people were forced out of the rural
agricultural South into the urban industrial North.

Migration out of the South was forced through racist terror as
well as an act of resistance in that people were rejecting old forms of
oppression in search of a better life.

Urban
Ghettoization

Racist segregationist practices dominated the cities and a real
estate conspiracy forced Black people into the worst housing, areas that
concentrated all of the worse social problems usually under tight police social
control.The major transformation was
based on Black people being employed in the industrial system and on that basis
building from their southern roots into major bases of potential political
power.

Crisis
of Permanent Poverty

A technological revolution is reorganizing the basis for
society, including dramatically reducing the demand for the labor of the old
industrial system.The capitalist state
is realigning and ending the social safety net brought about by the struggles
of the 1930s and 1960s that force the FDR New Deal and the Great Society of
Kennedy and Johnson.

A growing section of the Black community is being forced into
permanent poverty, under the chemical assault of drugs both illegal and by
prescription, and facing a new form of slavery in the prison system.

Our
main fight is against the capitalist system

The Black left is fighting on all fronts against all forms of
oppression.A central point of unity is
that all of our struggles can advance only to the extent that we mount a full
assault on the capitalist system.Capitalism is the basis for the 1% control of this society and the
source of our misery.

What
is Capitalism?

Capitalism is an economic system that exploits the labor of the
working people and feeds the greed of the corporations and the rich who own the
factories and machines.People work and
create value turning raw materials into usable products and are paid much less
than the value they create, only the minimum.Most of the rest is surplus taken by the corporations as their
profit.There is a struggle between the
workers and the owners over the allocation of this surplus ? they live fat
while we starve.

How
is the origin of US capitalism based on slavery?

The wealth needed for the origin of the industrial system in
the US was created out of the super profits taken from the sale and labor of
the slaves, especially in the cotton fields.This slave based wealth has been used to fund many major corporations
and banks, and the basis for wealthy families that maintain control over social
and cultural institutions like the major private universities, especially in
the Ivy League.

How
does capitalism exploit us?

Today we live at a time when capitalism is transforming and
increasingly replacing human labor with smart machines.If people are not working for a wage the
market system is dysfunction for the circulation of goods and service ? no
money means people can?t buy what they need.

Capitalism has turned to making money on death, including the
combination of bad food and bad health care, all varieties of drugs and
alcohol, TV culture that kills the mind and the military industrial complex
that produces major weapons for imperialist wars and all forms of military
aggression including the violence in the cities throughout the U.S. All too often our churches become appendages
to the capitalist system by preaching money over morality.

How
does capitalism exploit the world?

Using global organizations like the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) among
others, the global capitalists have invaded almost every country in the world
to capture cheap labor and important raw materials.This continues the imperialist practice of
moving wealth from the third world into the major European countries and the
US.

The United Nations and NATO are used to justify imperialist
military aggression.

Can
we defeat the capitalist system?

Nothing lives forever ? slavery ended, feudalism ended, and
capitalism will end as well.More and
more the majority of humanity has no stake in the capitalist system and is
rapidly growing to hate it.Outside of
the US the discourse of resistance is explicit in its rejection of capitalism,
but inside we face the soft terror of media and government obsessed with
putting a gag rule on any alternative discourse.A good indication of the rejection of
capitalism was the ?Occupy Movement? that exposed the evil exploits of the
ruling 1%.The end of capitalism will
only come with our militant unity of action.

Strategic Working-class
Unity Starts With the Leadership of the Black Working-class

Why
the working class?

The majority of people in the US are working people, all of
whom are being exploited by the capitalist system and they hate it.The greatest allies of the Black Liberation
Movement are the militants in the working class movement, especially from the
oppressed nationalities and peoples. The
enemy of my enemy is my friend.Of
course there is a racist national chauvinism that turns some white workers into
enemies of Black people under the false notion amplified by the mainstream
media that we are the cause of their misery.As people fight in their own interest against the bosses, the conditions
are created to expose the role of white supremacy, offering opportunities to
win significant numbers of white workers to an anti-racist working-class
unity.This is meaning of the slogan solidarity
in the workers movement.

What
was the connection between Black slaves and white workers

When Black people were picking cotton in the slave system the
capitalist bosses exploited white workers, including child labor on machines in
the textile industry to work the cotton into thread and cloth.Slaves worked side by side with white
workers, both exploited, but whites confused by their white skin privilege of a
little more pay and the opportunity, joined in the oppression of Blacks.

Black
workers organizations

The first Black worker organization, The Colored National Labor
Union, was formed in 1866 and included Frederick Douglass as one of its early
leaders.High points in the organization
of Black works have been the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (1969), Black
Workers Congress (1971), Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (1972), Black
Workers for Justice (1981), and Black Workers Unity Movement (1985).There are also many rank and file Black
caucus groups, workers centers, and now the Southern Workers Assembly.

Class
unity with Latinos

National oppression and extreme capitalist exploitation of
Latinos makes them close allies of Black people.This is especially true with the people who
share a heritage from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and other countries
in the Caribbean, Central and South America.

The capitalist strategy is to divide workers and play them
against each other.The most desperate
will take lower wages creating a conflict if people lose their jobs.Our class unity must take a strong position
against this capitalist ploy and unite Black and Brown workers in a common
cause.

Class
struggle and Black liberation

The fight of workers is first and foremost a fight to make
their working conditions better, higher wages, with benefits and retirement
pension with which they can lead a decent quality of life.People fight as individuals, work teams, whole
work places, and entire industries.All
of this is necessary.We believe we must
go further and link these reform struggles with the vision and preparation to
fight to end the capitalist system once and for all.We are in an all-out war of the capitalists
against us, the workers.They will
always cheat us, because as capitalism dictates exploitation is how the game is
played.

We fight
on all fronts

The unity of the Black Liberation Movement and the workers
movement under revolutionary leadership does not take place in the
abstract.The class struggle against
national oppression always takes place in a concrete context.It is our theory that keeps us focused on the
underlying issues that unite us against the capitalist ruling class.The system of oppression and exploitation has
set us against each other, propped up people are in between us and them, and
employs the state and its police forces as their pawns of social control.While in the day to day struggle we confront
many ?in between? types it is important to keep our eye on the real enemy.On each battle front it is useful to maintain
a focus on a strategic slogan to guide us.

Women

Black women face the triple oppression of national oppression,
patriarchy, and class exploitation because most Black women are working people
in a racist country run mainly by white and male supremacists.

The movement we need requires gender equality! Mobilize the women and follow the leadership
of women on all battle fronts!

Environment

The capitalist system is destroying the natural environment of
the world by unleashing profit seekers to ravage eco-systems, pollute the air
and water, unleash nuclear waste, create global warming, and rapidly decrease
bio-diversity that has built up over millions of years.

The earth?s resources must be a commons for the use of all
humanity to share!End fossil fuel
use!Our future must be green!

Elderly

Our society is growing older but lacks sufficient support and
respect for senior members of our communities.This includes removing them from trans-generational households and
forcing them to face the crisis of declining incomes, weakening welfare
support, poor health care, and isolation from loved ones and friends.We must become a sharing and loving society
from the cradle to the grave.

Full pension for all retired workers!Build social capital of the elderly to be lifelong
contributors to society!All older people
must be respected and cared for!

Health

The capitalist system has spoiled our food, used advertising to
seduce people to lust for sugar, salt, and fried foods, and turned health care
into a factory system that keeps most of us running to the pharmacy dependent
on the latest drug commodity hoping the insurance company will pay.Of course there are people with no insurance
and have to choose between food, rent, and health care costs.Look around and see the obesity, bad teeth
and poor vision and hearing. The
capitalists have turned our neighborhoods into food deserts.This has to stop.

The education gains of the 1960?s have been wiped out.Our children are not learning to read and
write and work with numbers in the public schools while the system takes money
out of the public schools to finance the privatization of education.In many urban areas school boards are closing
schools in the Black and Latino communities at an alarming rate.High stakes testing results places our youth
on a path of failure with limited possibilities for good employment.College attendance and graduate rates are not
increasing and with attacks on affirmative action and minority scholarship
funding ethnic cleansing of the campus is taking place.

Free universal quality public education for all!

Police
repression and prisons

Every 28 hours the police forces in the US gun down a Black person.The vast majority of Black youth are
routinely rounded up and placed into the data bases of the police authorities.The prisons are overcrowded with Black men,
and Black women are increasing being processed through the prisons camps as
well.Many of the militant fighters have
been incarcerated in solitary confinement for decades.Our communities are under constant
surveillance, and when out of our segregated neighborhoods we are harassed and
arrested for driving while Black or wearing a hoodies, just being
ourselves.We are still not free in this
country!

Release all political prisoners!Stop the surveillance and monitoring of all
communication of the Black community!Stop police murder! Community control of police!

Housing

The last few economic crises that have ruined people?s lives in
this country have targeted Black people most of all and many have been based on
housing exploitation.Whether it is
outrageous mortgage schemes, or loan programs that cheat the unsuspecting
consumer, or the reservation camps of public housing, Black people are facing
housing insecurity.And when housing is
found it is usually the poorest in quality and highest in cost.We are faced with an increasing number of
people who are homeless, including adults and children.

House everyone and eliminate homelessness!End loan practices that cheat the people!

LGBT

One of the dangerous practices that undermine democracy is
devaluing and punishing people who fit into a category that is defined as
bad.This has all too often been applied
to people with varying gender styles of life, sexual orientations.Everyone must be guaranteed fundamental
rights of all people.Same sex
relationships and other gender based behaviors must always be respected.It is crucial to link the fight against LGBT
oppression to the cultural crisis of the capitalist system.

End homophobia now!Let
marriage be a personal choice!

Culture

The capitalist system turns everything into a commodity to be
bought and sold, and this includes the cultural production of the
community.We all used to sing and now
we buy CDs and pay to go hear other people sing.Furthermore they pay them to sing what they
want not what we have been doing to serve ourselves and our community.Hip Hop ? Rap was invented to serve our
community and expression the political critique and aspirations of the youth
and has been twisted into the abnormal gangster rap.Perhaps the greatest danger comes from TV and
its renaissance of the old stereotypical images of Black people as clowns or
gladiators.

On the other hand there is an unbroken history of cultural
production that has inspired people to resistance and fight back.The poets and musicians lead the way.Our cultural revolution must re-link to our
African origins and embrace the best in the history of our cultural
developments as African Americans.Jazz
is Black classical music.

Cultural production for Black liberation!Recruit cultural workers to every front of
struggle!

Reparations

The exploitation of Black labor and the brutal oppression of
Black people is part of the international conditions create by the
Trans-Atlantic slave trade and system of colonialism. This international system
created a major part of the capital accumulation for the development of
European and U.S. capitalism. Issues of underdevelopment, lack of opportunity,
inequality in social status, and shorter life expectancy for the majority of
Black people throughout the world, are some of the injuries built into the
capitalist system with continuing impacts. The demand for reparations connects
Africa and the African Diaspora to a common international demand for redress
against the governments of colonialism and imperialism and the international
economic institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the
World Trade Organization for crimes against humanity as outlined in the UN
Declaration on Human Rights.

Reparations must be one of the major demands for
self-determination!

The
centrality of the South

The Black liberation movement takes place in every state, every
city, and has tasks in many countries around the world.Special consideration must be given to the
ancestral homeland of Black people in the US, the former slave states of the
South.This is the largest concentration
of Black people, the greatest levels of exploitation by US and global capital,
and is leading the country in right wing initiatives.

Concentration
of Black people

In 2010, 55 percent of the black population lived in the South,
and 105 Southern counties had a black population of 50 percent or higher.

Concentration
of class exploitation

Throughout the 11 states of the Southern Black Belt, there are
11,523,063 people living in poverty.A
single parent of two children working a full-time minimum wage job will make
$10,712 before taxes?more than $4,500 below the federal poverty line.

Global
capital

Because many Southern states have right-to-work anti-union laws
the region has recruited global capital to take advantage of cheap labor.

Right
wing political concentration

The most backward politicians with anti-democratic policies are
based in the South. Their demand for state?s rights is a form of autonomy to
keep the South as a region.

We are
part of a global struggle

We all live on Planet Earth and increasingly our struggles
involve issues that impact people all over the globe.We embrace the need to be internationalists
and focus on freedom and quality of life for everyone in the world.Our approach is to link especially to the
struggles in the African Diaspora.

The
struggle in Africa

1960 was proclaimed by the United Nations as Africa Year
because so many countries were gaining their independence from European
colonization.However this led to
neo-colonialism governed by the World Bank the IMF.Furthermore a class of bureaucratic tyrants
took control of the state apparatus in most countries and looted the wealth and
suppressed the people.

Rebuild the African struggle for independence, unity and
freedom!

The
struggle of Black people in the Caribbean

All of the Caribbean island countries are part of the African
Diaspora.In their origin the difference
for African people was only about where the slave trading boat stopped and
which European colonial language one was going to be forced to speak.The fight continues in the Caribbean on many
levels, from the trade union based Movement for Social Justice in
Trinidad-Tobago, to the fight for sustaining socialism in Cuba.

Long live Caribbean unity!Oppose the domination of US and global capital!

The
struggle of Black people in Latin America

In Central and South America, including Mexico which is in
North America, their history of Spanish colonialism brought African labor and
historic Black populations.This is
notably in Brazil and Colombia, but there is some manifestation in most
places.The impact of US imperialism has
forced many of these peoples to migrate to the US creating Latin American
Diasporas.We have the joint unity of
the origins of the African Diaspora and the contemporary shared experiences of
racism and class exploitation.

Long live African American and Latino unity!Build our movements of movements throughout
the Americas!

The
struggle of Black people in Europe

There are Black communities all over Europe.They have been informed by the militant struggles
we have waged in the US and we must embrace their history of struggle as
well.They face comparable forms of
racism and class exploitation, those born there as well as the recent migrants
from the African continent.

Long live the unity of African Americans and Black Europe!

Our fight
for reform is linked to a revolutionary strategy

The idea of a revolution is abstract but the fight for one is
not.

The
day to day struggle

Peoples fight back in the context of their lives, at their
place of work, at the unemployment office, at the grocery store, the school,
the church, etc.Big political ideas
take shape and form on the ground in practical circumstances.When the fight intensifies everybody can get
educated, can get political, and can begin to think about the link between the
reform struggle and the revolutionary leap that is necessary.It is mainly in this context that a Black
left can be grounded in the roots of our people, in the very fight they wage
themselves.We join them, embrace their
leadership, link their fight with the fight of others, and help them to sum up
and learn lessons from victories and defeats, and train militants to increase
their ability to sustain the struggle.

Fight back every day!Link the fight for reform to revolutionary goals!

The
response to racist attacks

Every racist attack must be opposed and mass resistance built
to end it.Just as we raised the slogan
?No More Trayvons? as part of the massive nationwide mass mobilization, so we
continue that on higher and higher more coordinated levels.This is one of the key tasks of building a
national Black liberation movement.

The
electoral struggle

The capitalist state is a rigged game controlled by the ruling
class.They don?t play fair and we can?t
win by getting in it and trying to reform things.All too often we have been lured into local
politics as mayors and city council officials only to try and fix a broken
system that can?t be fixed with minimal reforms.However electoral politics is a terrain of
struggle in which debate and discussion can be used to raise the consciousness
of people and present them with an alternative to the hypocrisy and illusions
of mainstream politicians.The movement
must remain autonomous from the state and NGO control.On the other hand Black power at the local
level can be used by the movement, especially if used to build the independent
power of the forces in struggle ? unionization, minimum wage, use of eminent
domain to house the homeless, money for public schools not charter schools,
etc.

Hold elected officials accountable to serve the community!

Our
struggle will last for generations

Each of us lives a life and we hope to attain the goals we set
during that time.It is important to
think of struggle as a hand off through the generations in which each
generation has a mission, a contribution to make, and then it is up to the next
generation to take it from there.We all
fight for freedom, but the fight towards freedom goes forward one step, one
stage, one historic leap at a time.

The
1960?s generation

The last great upsurge was the 1960?sSee ?How the 1960s? Riots
Hurt African-Americans,? National Bureau of Economic Research. The activists of
the 1960?s are the current elders of the movement.They are walking living libraries of
information.They are also the bearers
not only of the experiences of victory and great mass mobilization but of past
factional battles and splits within the movement.All of this experience is valuable, both what
to emulate and what to avoid.

The
21st century

The 21st century is very different from the 1960?s.We are in the midst of a technological
revolution that is being used to change all aspects of life and we have to
adapt to that and learn how to use digital tools to make our struggle more
effective.We don?t have the revolution
of rising expectation that we had in the 1960?s, fueled by the revolutions in
China and Cuba as well as the national liberation battles all over Africa,
including Vietnam.Today we are fighting
many forms of Afro-pessimism as well as the disease of drugs and a breakdown of
many traditional institutions.Today we
are being challenged to rebuild on a new basis to take our fight to the next
level.

Building
revolutionary institutions and rituals to sustain our movement

Our task is to build organization to struggle in every context
? workers, students, church members, residents, health care patients, seniors,
etc.People get reborn when engaged in
struggle and we must engage as our people need a rebirth.Every organization must be built on the
foundation of our own people and not based on hand outs from friendly
foundations and NGOs.

Dual Power:
A Strategic Revolutionary Objective of Self-determination and Workers Power

Altering the balance of power between the Black and
multinational working-class and the U.S. ruling-class and its imperialist state
in favor of positioning the oppressed and exploited masses for social
revolution, must be a constant aim of revolutionary strategy.

A strategic program focuses mainly on the relationship between
politics and economics. It must not only put forward demands for democracy, it
must fight for transformative power to organize alternative social, economic
and political models that begin to engage the masses in organizing and
administering in a different way the places where they work, the communities
where they live, the social institutions they rely on and positions in local
government. This can be defined as a level of dual and contending power.

Our pledge
is to fight for freedom by any means necessary

The BLUN is committed to building a national network of the
most militant, most class conscious fighters for Black liberation.Our goal in drafting this manifesto is to
create a national dialogue about what basic unity we can reach so that we have
a context for coordinating our fight back.This Draft Manifesto will be discussed on conference calls, in face to
face regional meetings, and at a National Assembly for Black Liberation.It is a draft so we welcome all comments,
criticisms, and revised text.

================================

The Ferguson Rebellion:

Why Rebuild the National Black Liberation
Movement!

The Black
Left Unity Network

www.blackleftunity.org?252-314-2363

The national Black Community and all people of
justice must make our voices heard and actions felt against the government
sanctioned police killings of unarmed Black people taking place throughout the
U.S. The murder of young Michael Brown in the St Louis, MO suburbs of Ferguson,
adds to the thousands of police killings of unarmed Black people, occurring at
a rate of one every 28 hours.

The criminalization of working-class and poor Black
and Latino communities by the corporate mainstream media is designed to uphold
a racist social and political climate that defines the victims of oppression as
the threats to so-called democracy and law and order. This is part of the
ongoing racist strategy of national oppression to rationalize and justify the
contradictions in U.S. democracy in the application of laws and policies that
militarize the police and occupies Black communities throughout across the U.S.

The surplus homeland security
funding has given police departments over $75 billion in military equipment!

This U.S. militarization of the police is part of
the U.S. global strategy of empire, carried out by the pentagon representing
the highest command level of the U.S. military industrial complex. For several
decades, the U.S. government?s $3 billion yearly military aid to Israel helps
to point out the connection between U.S. imperialism and the Zionist settler state
of Israel and why the Israeli military has trained more than 9000 U.S. police
at the federal, state and municipal levels.

Militarized police are now being deployed in other
cities across the U.S. where Ferguson solidarity protests are happening.They see this support as an expression of a
developing national resistance that has not yet formed an organized national
Black united front? a people?s front and a program of action to unite and
provide a national political direction to connect the various local solidarity
efforts and local fight backs against police killings.

Without the pressure of national mass resistance
and active international support of demands that both address the police murder
of Brown and other unarmed Black victims that have taken place, and that pushes
to condemn these killings in the international community as crimes against
humanity, the promised investigations by the U.S. Attorney General and
government agencies will, once again, find the police killings as a local
matter, making the rule of justice the domain of the U.S. courts whose role is
to protect the image and organizations of the state.

In order to deal with the Police killing of 18 yr
old Brother Michael Brown, the immediate demands must be linked to and elevated
by national demands as an oppressed people under attack, citing Brown?s murder
as part of a pattern of state sanctioned repression. The Black liberation Movement
must call for these police killings to be tried in the International Criminal
Court as crimes against humanity? calling for concrete international
intervention to help bring pressure on the U.S. government to end its military occupation
and attacks on basic civil and human rights of Black and other oppressed
peoples inside of the U.S.

The cry of the Black masses for justice being
expressed by the rebellion in Ferguson, Missouri and throughout the U.S. is a
cry for change and for the power to
make radical change. It is not a cry for
a failed democracy, even when led by a Black president who has shamefully tried
to use his position as U.S. president to convince Black people that the system
of national oppression has ended and that we now live in a postracial
democratic society where any of your problems are due to you and not systemic
capitalism and racism. His urging of the Black, oppressed and working-class
masses to have faith and tolerance with the repressive and exploitive policies
and practices of the government and the capitalist system, has discouraged, distracted,
muffled and muzzled the national Black Resistance that has traditionally been the major national leading social force
responding to the crises of U.S. and global capitalism.

Obama?s urging of the Black, oppressed and
working-class masses to have faith and tolerance with the repressive and
exploitive policies and practices of the government and the capitalist system,
has discouraged, distracted, muffled and muzzled the national Black Resistance
that has traditionally been the major national leading social force responding
to the crises of U.S. and global capitalism.

While immediate demands for local justice must be
made for the jailing of the killer cop, the removal of the militarized police
from Ferguson, the firing of the police chief and all those in authority
defending the murder of Michael Brown, it needs to be clarified that the people
have no confidence in these agencies of the state. There should be a call for
the forming of peoples monitoring committees, including international
representatives that monitor every aspect of U.S. level investigations, media
coverage and court actions to make a national and international report through
progressive, allied and social media.

President Obama should not be called in
to talk to the people of Ferguson, allowing him a platform to send the false
message that the federal government will act. His main message will try to
split the united sentiment and forces in Ferguson and throughout the U.S. He should be criticized for not speaking out
and taking federal action against these police and vigilante killings that have
taken place doing his administration which have become a national epidemic?
placing the lives of Black and Brown people, especially the youth at serious
risk.

Elevating the rebellion in Ferguson to a hotspot of
an expanding national resistance requires the Black Left to form a strategic
unity to build the national and international capacity to raise the political
consciousness, demands and level of struggle that mobilizes mass based Black
and working-class power. Without clear
political demands and coordinated struggle, it is difficult to deal with
ultra-left errors and actions by agent provocateurs that are often hard to
distinguish in the spontaneous struggles.

The continuing of protest in Ferguson, throughout
the country and internationally is very important to shape public opinion and pressure
for justice for the Brown murder and demanding an end to the occupation and
oppression of the Black communities and people. However, national resistance
must go beyond street protests to impact the economy and political system that
is responsible for this militarization and police occupation to repress and
contain Black resistance to the oppressive economic, social and political
conditions that creates super profits for capital as the masses of people face
a depression level existence.

For example, the August 16th blockade of
the Israeli ship at the San Francisco harbor demanding the end of the Israel
bombing of Gaza and the occupation of Palestine was an important exercise of our
power. Similar actions and tactics
must become part of the national resistance carried out in every major industry
and sector demanding concrete justice for Brown and all unarmed victims of
police killings and that empowers people to have greater control over the
police and to advance the struggle for self-determination and revolutionary
change.

Rebuild Black Worker Organizations!

The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the
League of Revolutionary Black Workers were inspired by the 1967 Detroit
Rebellions that took the struggle against racist national oppression into the
auto and eventually other industries, thus positioning the Black liberation movement
to carry out struggle inside of the labor movement and at the point of
capitalist production.These forms of Black
worker organization must be rebuilt to help shape the Black and general
working-class consciousness and mobilize their power against the system of
Black national oppression and U.S. and global capitalism.

There has yet to be a call for workers to strike in
Ferguson as part of the rebellion. Nor has there been a call for strikes in
other cities throughout the U.S. in support of the Ferguson rebellion. Brother
Clarence Thomas -a rank-and-file leader
of the ILWU Local 10 and of the Million Worker March- in speaking at the
site of the rally of several thousand blocking the unloading of the Israel
company cargo ship, declared that as an African American he understood growing
up that the police was an occupying force. He likened the rebellion in Ferguson
to the resistance in Gaza and pointed out that these two fronts of resistance
were communicating with each other and these actions that impacted trade and
production needed to take place across the U.S.https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PcJHlnq4YIo#t=0

The forces of U.S. capital and the imperialist
state know clearly that national resistance by the Black masses would become a
catalyst for a general resistance of all oppressed people and sections of the
broader U.S. working-class. Ferguson is showing this potential.

To expand and deepen the national resistance, new
alignments and national frameworks must be built that help to mobilize mass
based power around demands as an oppressed people deeply exploited under the
capitalist system. The Latino national political strike on May Day 2006
demanding immigrant rights and in protest against the Sensenbrenner bill, sets
an example of the type of national resistance mobilization needed to fight
against the state sanctioned police killings of unarmed Black, Brown and
indigenous peoples as the three mainoccupied communities inside of the U.S.

The Black left should view the rebellion in
Ferguson and the national and international solidarity being expressed as the
opening of a period of national Black national resistance under an Obama
administration that has discouraged such resistance over the a past 6 years,
promoting a Black leadership class that aligns with capitalism and the state on
U.S. domestic and foreign policies.

There will be many voices and political interests
calling for justice and peace in Ferguson and throughout the U.S. as the
national resistance develops. While we
must struggle against the push by reformists to deal with the murder of Michael
Brown and the Ferguson rebellion as a local issue, to be resolved only by a
charge and court action against the killer cop and the appointment of more
Blacks to the police and local government, the Black left must focus on
spreading and deepening the Black national resistance.

The Black left must focus on
organizing a national Black united front, a people?s front and the forming of
worker and student alliances and a Black and women of color led national
campaign lifting up the police killings of Black and youth of color as an act
of genocide.

This new period requires the focus
on developing a national program of action for Black liberation.The Black Left Unity Network has called for
the holding of a National Assembly for Black Liberation and a national discussion
and shaping of a Draft Manifesto toward developing a national program to be
ratified at the National Assembly.

The 1960s rebellions representing a transition from
civil rights to Black power recognized that they needed to hold national Black
power conferences to consolidate this emerging new phase of resistance and
political alignment. While there were different class forces at these national
conferences, they were important in helping to elevate the national Black
political consciousness and placing the Black power struggle within the context
of the anti-colonial national liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, Latin
America and the Caribbean at that time.

Linking the Black liberation movement to the global
struggles against U.S. led capitalism and empire, will not occur spontaneously.
This is truer now than during the 1960s,
because the election of Obama as U.S. president has confused many about how to
understand the political character of the oppression of Black people inside the
U.S.Without a clear understanding, the
spontaneous struggles can be taken in any direction, depending on the alignment
of forces providing the most organized political leadership on the ground
throughout the U.S.

We must always be mindful that there will be major
efforts to pull this growing national sentiment generated by the Ferguson
rebellion and the issue of police killings of unarmed Black people into the
realm of bourgeois politics under the Democratic Party, as it prepares for the
2016 presidential election period. While this must become a major issue raised
by the Black masses as part of a national mandate for the end of military
occupation of the Black and oppressed communities, it must be part of an anticapitalist
international demand and campaign that builds pressure on the U.S.

FERGUSON FOR REAL

We are seeing the mainstream media project the line
that the rebellion is being instigated by ?outsiders.? This contemptuous and
racist view of the Black masses suggests that the very history of white
minority rule over the Black majority in Ferguson ? the police, city council,
planning commissions and the economy and the very way that this death squad
murder of Michael Brown has been handled by the militarization of Ferguson is
not enough to anger the masses to take action.

First, it is important to see the police killings
in Ferguson as part of a national condition faced by working-class Black
communities, and by many Blacks venturing into white middle-class communities.
So Black people in Ferguson while engaged in rebellion; should not be seen as the
only battlefront of the growing resistance to police killings of unarmed Black
and Brown people across the U.S.

The presence in Ferguson of Black liberation and
revolutionary activists from other cities expressing solidarity, should help
make the call for Black national unity for national resistance, not simply
promoting their various organizational lines as correct absent a united front
of struggle.

For
the fragmented Black left not to recognize the need to unite to advance the
struggle in this period when the state sanctioned police killings of unarmed
Black people are viewed throughout the U.S. and international as atrocities of
Black national oppression, is to be sectarian and to bow to spontaneity.

It is time to raise the banner of the Black
liberation movement rebuilding its national character to provide leadership for
national resistance and a program for Black liberation.

It is time to raise
the banner of the Black liberation movement rebuilding its national character
to provide leadership for national resistance and a program for Black
liberation!

NOW IS THE TIME!

Join The Black
Left Unity Network (BLUN)!

Contact us:

Email: blackleftunity@googlegroups.com

Phone: 252-314-2363

=========

Statement by

the Black Left Unity Network: The Black Community

Must Actively Oppose All Racist

and Anti-Immigrant Laws!

Black social justice activists and revolutionaries must actively oppose and educate about the racist Arizona law SB 1070. The fact that such a law is being enacted during the tenure of the first African American U.S. President, makes clear, the fallacy of a so-called "post racial" America.

This draconian legislation should remind the Black community of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which enabled and required law enforcement nation-wide to hunt down Black people, ?whether slave or free? and ?return them to slavery?. It should remind us of the racist Apartheid pass laws that segregated and restricted the mobility of Black people in South Africa.

It should also remind us of the massive police brutality suffered in our communities nation-wide everyday where racial profiling is routinely used by police to ?stop and detain? any Black person (or other persons of color) under the pretext that they look ?suspicious? of some criminal activity. Under the current racist and anti-immigrant climate harbored by many in this country, this is clearly an invitation for heightened abuse and brutality against all Latinos and ultimately all people of color.

This law promotes and relies on divisions among the working class. Amidst this severe economic crisis, the greatest challenge to corporate power is a anti racist, anti sexist, anti homophobic and internationally united working class.

African Americans and Latinos are the two largest nationally oppressed sectors of the U.S. working class. To divide them, is to weaken the basis for a critically needed alliance in the struggle for democracy, workers power and radical change. On Saturday, April 24th, in recognition of the importance of Black and Brow unity, the Black Worker Caucus at the Labor Notes Conference in Detroit, voted unanimously to support the call by the Latino Worker Caucus to fight the racist Arizona Law.

If Obama's response to this racist law, is lukewarm as it has been to the racist attacks on him and the Black masses from within the Democratic and Republic Parties and the growing Tea Party movement, it will encourage tensions and divisions between African Americans and Latinos .

This makes it ALL the more important for the voices of the Black masses to be heard opposing this unjust law. The Black masses must be mobilized to demand that the Obama administration use its powers to defeat this racist law. This speaks to the critical need for Black left unity to carry out the scope and depth of work needed to raise the voices of the national Black masses.

Black left unity in critical for shaping a Black working class and anti imperialist consciousness.Join the Black Left Unity Network!

========================

The Black Liberation Movement must be more than the spontaneity of the Black masses. It must provide a national framework with an internationalist perspective and strategic organizing components that seek to unite the thinking and actions of the many struggles around a program for revolutionary change.

Thus, the Black liberation movement must have conscious activists that work together to give the spontaneous struggles a conscious program and direction; an assessment of the balance of forces on the side of the oppressor and the oppressed; and provide a global context for understanding their struggles for a better world.

The fragmentation of the Black Liberation Movement resulting from the U.S. government attacks and the ideological errors during the late 1960s and 1970s, and further impacted by the demise of major zones of socialism as the main bases of support for the anti-imperialist struggles worldwide, has made it difficult to forge unity among enough Black left forces to effectively intervene in crucial struggles like the political disenfranchisement of Black people in Florida and Ohio that installed Bush Jr. as U.S. president in 2000 and 2004 and Katrina in 2005.

When the forces in the Black Liberation Movement who make big demands for redress on the system for its crimes against Black people, are unable to give direction to the Black people?s spontaneous responses to such blatant acts of national oppression, it does not build confidence among the Black masses that a Black Liberation Movement can help to bring about the liberation of Black people. This also weakens the confidence of the national and intentional anti-imperialist forces in the Black Liberation Movement.

The forging of a unity of the Black left, must therefore be a conscious, continuing and serious effort of the Black Liberation Movement, if it is to become more than the sum total of the spontaneous local struggles, and the loose national networks that form to try and influence election campaigns and win basic reforms.

The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN), while far from the scope and depth of the unity that is needed, represents a conscious and active commitment and mechanism toward forging this unity. Through BLUN working groups like the Cuba Working Group, we seek to unite Black left forces in practical mass work and educational activities, as we try to figure out ways of widening an deepening a unity process.

=]]=]=]=]=]=]=]=]=]=]=]=]=]=]=]

Stop the War on Black America!

We Charge Genocide!

Human Rights for All!

The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) expresses our rage and refusal to accept the courtroom verdict of the murder of Trayvon Martin by white supremacist George Zimmerman and the failure of the Sanford, Florida police department and local government to immediately arrest and charge Zimmerman. We stand with the family of young Trayvon Martin in their continued grief over the unjust killing of their son and the prolonged injustice of a legal system that is unaccountable for the safety or justice for our communities.

We know that justice or answers to our many questions about this Verdict will not be found in the same criminal injustice system at the local, state or federal level. What we do know, is that this and other murders of many of our people are a crime against humanity and a violation of human rights that must be judge by the Black, oppressed and exploited masses in the U.S. and oppressed peoples throughout the world who are struggling against U.S. led Imperialism's injustices and for human rights.

Throughout U.S. history, Black life has never been fully protected by the legal, political or economic systems. US Imperialism at home has often meant the repression and violent social control of Black communities. The crisis of capitalism requires new forms of social control grounded in historic forms of oppression and the expansion of White Supremacy described by the 1857 Dred Scott Act - that Black people have no rights that whites are bound to respect.

Within one month after the U.S. Supreme Court declared open season for racist voting suppression symbolized by their verdict on the Voting Rights Act, the Sanford court declared open season for the whites to kill Black and Brown youth if they feel threatened by the way they dress, are in the wrong neighborhood, or play Hip Hop music.

As we saw at the time when Trayvon was murdered in 2012, we are again seeing the emergence of many networks as part of the spontaneous response of the outraged masses. There will be many mobilizations this time, involving and led by various class, political and ideological forces demanding justice from their various perspectives.

What was missing in the response to Trayvon's murder and the extrajudicial and white supremacist murders of Black and Brown mainly young brothers every 28 hours, that must be corrected this time, is a force united and strong enough and anchored by the unity of the Black left, to bring about the convergence of these mass actions and forces around a program of action.

The Black left must advance a program that fights for structural changes and for forms of people?s democracy and democratic governance, to restrain the repressive structures and policies of the state and capitalist elites as part of the struggle for radical social transformation of the system.

Part of what must define the Black left, must be a recognition that these atrocities are produced by the capitalist system where white supremacy, national oppression and patriarchy are its main pillars, and the willingness to find points of unity with others to fight against, and for the radical transformation of the capitalist system. We call on forces within the Black Left to unite in our rage against this Verdict and stand together in our short term responses, and in longer term movement building strategies to mobilize the power of masses of Black and oppressed people... We refuse to accept or forget this injustice and the broader injustices it represents.

Black Left Unity Network at the 2010 US Social Forum What is the Black Left Unity Network?• We are defined by our statement of principles:• We are Black people fighting for power and liberation.• We fight to end the system of capitalist exploitation, patriarchy, homophobia and all other forms of oppression.• We organize by connecting local battlefronts rooted in a working class perspective to build national unity of action and international solidarity with other struggling oppressed people.

Black Left Unity Network at the 2010 US Social Forum- Detroit, Michigan

National oppression has necessitated that the struggle for democratic rights as understood by the Black masses take its course. The question for the Black left, has been how it provides leadership to the Black masses in this struggle to help lead to the exposure of the capitalist system and the building of the revolutionary Black working class anchored and led infrastructure that moves the struggle forward on a sharper and more conscious anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist trajectory.

The fragmentation of the Black left and the Black liberation movement has prevented us from working together to build this revolutionary infrastructure and the mass political work to raise sharper Black national and working class consciousness.

Black left forces have not for the most part struggled against the contradictions of the capitalist ruling class and system from a base within the Black masses. This includes how some wage the struggle against Obama.

Most of the critiques from the Black left about Obama are correct. However, most send a message that the principle contradiction is between Obama and the people; not capitalism/imperialism and the people.

Over the years, since the decline of the alignment of forces giving expression to a national Black liberation movement, the struggle for democracy has changed from a struggle for mass based Black power and control over institutions, to a struggle for access and policy changes. This has given the struggle more of a civil rights character than one for human rights and self-determination.

Self-determination must be based on the struggle for mass based power; not just for the right to have access. This understanding and reorientation is especially important at this stage of the crisis of capitalism when the demand for redistribution of wealth and power is critical to a transition that favors the oppressed and the working class.

This struggle is both independent of and also merges with the struggles of other oppressed peoples and the working class.

Without the struggle for mass based Black power as a struggle for self-determination, the Black left projects the role of the U.S. president as the principle contradiction. This liquidates the need for mass based Black power as essential for altering the balance of power between capitalism/imperialism and the people.

This can have the effect of promoting the system of bourgeois democracy, instead of tactically utilizing it to build areas of power as part of the struggle for mass based Black power, and bases of contending power challenging the rule of the capitalist/imperialist ruling class.

How does the Black left advance the struggle for mass based Black power in the Black masses relationship to all of the main institutions that impact our lives with a vision of restructuring and redefining their roles in society?

There is no question that the masses of Black people are disappointed to say the least, about the Obama presidency. They expected to see a stronger president calling on the Black, Latino and working class masses to speak truth to power on the issues impacting our lives, which he hasn’t. When he did in the case of the demand for national healthcare, he back off and compromised with the insurance and pharmaceuticals and the populist racist right.

Yes, the Black masses are concerned about the racist right. Should we expect otherwise? The Tea Party showed that it was able to build a national movement and mobilize aspects of mainly white power. There are contradictions among the right. Some are neo-fascists, but they form a united front.

The Black left will not be able to counter this pull on the Black masses toward the Democratic Party by simply pointing out that actions are co-opting the OWS. We must unite to build and promote a mass campaign to give voice to the Black masses that expresses our main issues and demands.

This does not mean that the various tendencies within the Black left must stop putting forth our views However, it would show united around a strategic focus that seeks to position the demands of the Black masses against the issues, policies and line of the Democratic and Republican Party, including forcing Obama to have to oppose or side with the demands of the people.

Saladin Muhammad- Co-Founder, Black Left Unity Network and Member of Black Workers for Justice- North Carolina

Black Left Unity Network's Listserv Code of Conduct

Dear BLUN Listserv Readers,

Several weeks ago there were a number of postings to the Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) listserv by a veteran Black activist that were not only blatantly wrong and untrue, they were also uncomradely and disrespectful in language and tone and took on the form of an attack against the BLUN.

While there was an initial decision by the BLUN Continuations Committee (BLUN CC) to respond to these false charges with criticisms of the Black activist posting them and with a statement clarifying our actual views on the subjects raised, we later felt that the BLUN listserv should not be used to legitimize or promote this type of exchange, as it goes against the principle of Unity-Struggle-Unity which the BLUN believes must be an essential part of a Black left unity process. As well, the BLUN CC wanted to take the time to objectively examine all of the implications and issues raised through these postings and forthrightly state our unified position.

We recognize that there are differences among Black left forces. There is a need to discuss and better understand the tactical, strategic and ideological nature of these differences as part of a unity process and a comradely struggle for clarity. Sectarianism however, a tendency that seeks to find fault with every difference, and to project them as counter revolutionary and antagonistic without proper investigation or communication with other comrades in struggle, has no place in a unity process.

The BLUN is also clear that the question of patriarchy must be taken up in a serious and principled way as a part of the ongoing efforts to forge Black left unity, including having the necessary structures and principles for the BLUN to address patriarchy in all areas of work, and to help deepen political, ideological and social consciousness on the question.

On the issue of being supporters of Obama which was raised in one or more of the postings, this is not and never has been the position of the BLUN. The BLUN has never made support or non-support for Obama a precondition for joining the BLUN. The Obama campaign issue was debated at the BLUN founding in North Carolina in May 2008 reflecting various positions. However, BLUN has never called for support for Obama. BLUN CC members also have many sharp criticisms of Obama and his administration.

The entire incident has prompted the BLUN to post a Code of Conduct for using the BLUN listserv. We ask that our readers please comply with this Code of Conduct.

The BLUN CC feels that the listserv should encourage frank, honest, comradely and free flowing posting and discussion and not be filtered by a moderator.

This listserv is a service of the Black Left Unity Network (BLUN). Opinions expressed on this listserv represent individuals and organizations posting to this list and NOT the positions and opinions of BLUN as an organization unless designated as a Black Left Unity Statement.

We hope that users of this listserv treat each other with Brotherly and Sisterly respect and dignity that comes as Comrades-in-Struggle. This is especially important for BLUN in that we are struggling to bring about Black Left Unity in a nation and period of extreme antagonisms from the Capitalist Class and its Rightwing lieutenants of all hues.

The Black Left Unit Network listserv is a venue for frank, honest and comradely discussion and exchanges in the spirit of Unity-Struggle-Unity. As a component for building a broad Black left unity process, the BLUN Continuations Committee is posting the following BLUN Listserv Code of Conduct for using the listserv.

• Frank exchanges of different views are welcomed, but shall not be done in a disrespectful and uncomradely manner.

• Promoting male supremacy, homophobia or chauvinism against other oppressed peoples shall not be tolerated.

• Attacks on individuals and organizations that go beyond the scope of objective and principled criticism shall not be tolerated.

If any of these Code of Conduct Principles are violated, the poster violating them will be notified to make an immediate posted apology, and if violated a second time, will be removed from the listserv for a period of up to 6 months for the first violation. Appeals and requests for reconsideration can be made to the BLUN Continuations Committee who will make the final determination.